


Walls and Secrets: The Tale of Aisa

by mur_cielago



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Ba Sing Se is a Dystopian Hellscape, Headcanon, Origin Story, Other, There Is No War In Ba Sing Se
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mur_cielago/pseuds/mur_cielago
Summary: 15-year-old Aisa lives with her seven siblings in a slum in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se. Her whole family, and especially her mother, is haunted by the memory of her oldest sister, who, as the story goes, ran away many years ago at the same age Aisa is now. Aisa, dissatisfied with her mundane life of poverty and her mother's paranoia, dreams of better things. Her rebellious nature leads her to sneak out one day to the local market, where she finds out the hard way that the great walled city hides endless dark, terrifying secrets.Set (mostly) during the timeline of the main show, this story explores the origins of one of the most unnervingly enigmatic, yet fascinating characters in the Avatar universe.
Kudos: 4





	Walls and Secrets: The Tale of Aisa

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for mature themes including: Human trafficking, brainwashing, authoritarianism, and torture 
> 
> I wanted to explore a bit what life is like for the poorest residents of Ba Sing Se (spoiler alert; it sucks), and explore a character (or rather, more of a concept) that didn't get much backstory at all in the original series. 
> 
> I have no idea how many chapters this will be; but if there's enough interest I'm sure it can definitely be quite a few. 
> 
> The main character is named after a Filipina friend of mine. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any ideas!

“Four years, five months, and sixteen days,” Aera murmured between bites of her breakfast stew. It was a simple recipe, made with cheap, nearly-rancid produce from the local market. It got a little tiring eating the same thing every morning, but it was all she could afford with so many mouths to feed. She fought back tears looking around the small table at her eight children, trying not to think about how it should’ve been _nine_.

“Mom, you can’t still be counting the days.” Aera’s youngest son, seven-year-old Jae, rolled his eyes as he took a heaping spoonful of stew. “She’s gone. If she wanted to come back, she would have already.”

“Jae!” His older sister, Aisa shot him a dagger-like glare. “How dare you say that to Mom! You don’t even remember her! You were just a baby when she ran away!”

“Do you even remember her?” Jae retorted. “Or do you just remember all the things Mom _tells_ you about her?”

“Of course I remember her!” Aisa exclaimed, practically screaming now. “She was my big sister! I remember she loved to stroke and braid my hair whenever I cried. She stole a nice doll from the shop one time, just for me! She saw me stare at it every day when we walked past it, and then on my birthday, it was on my pillow. But then someone took it and cut off all its hair.” She turned to scowl at her other brother, Ji-Tae. Ji-Tae ducked down under the table to avoid his sister’s death glare.

“She stole a doll?” Jae gasped. “So Big Sister was a _thief_? With the way Mom talks about her, you would think she was the perfect reincarnation of Avatar Yangchen.”

“Just shut up, Jae! Big Sister did what she had to for us. After Dad went away things got really hard. You wouldn’t remember. Everything’s perfect when you’re the _baby_.”

“You were obviously Big Sister’s favorite, Aisa,” Minji, who was a year younger than her sister, interjected. “I remember all she did was tattle on me for every little thing!”

“You deserved it, Minji. If you didn’t wanna be tattled on, you shouldn’t have done sneaky things.” Aisa shrugged as Minji confronted her with balled fists.

“SHE WAS THE THIEF AND YOU’RE TELLING ME _I_ DESERVED IT?” Minji raged. If she’d been an earthbender, rocks would definitely have been flying right at her sister’s face.

“Children, please!” Aera slammed her fist on the table, causing all the dishes to rattle and the room to go silent. “I don’t want to hear any more of this bickering. Finish your meal and start on your chores.” She sat down again and sighed, watching the anger on her children’s faces slowly subside and fade into simmering frustration. One by one, they got up from the table and dispersed to various corners of the apartment, knowing exactly what their duties for the day were.

“Mom, after I finish cleaning, can I go with the neighbor girls to the market to get more drawing supplies?” Aisa asked, trying to give her mother the cutest, most innocent-looking turtle-duck eyes she could muster.

“Absolutely not!” Aera shrieked, anger rising in her throat.

“Why not?” Aisa pushed. She’d been doing that a lot lately; pushing her mother’s boundaries.

“Because I said so!” Aera retorted.

“You let my little brothers go all the time! And they’re younger than me! I’m almost sixteen!”

“Exactly.” Aera’s voice cracked. “You’re almost sixteen, and you look just like her.”

Aisa scowled. “Look just like who?”

“Your Big Sister!” Aera was practically pulling her hair out in frustration at her daughter’s insistent questions.

“What does that have to do with anything? I don’t know why you’re mad, Mom. I’m happy to look like her! She had the widest, most beautiful smile! Do you think I have her smile too, Mom?”

Aera didn’t answer. Aisa could tell she was trying to hold back tears. She suddenly realized that she’d pushed too far. Talking about Big Sister always made her mother like this, a sobbing mess.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I won’t ask again, I promise. I’ll stay here like you always tell me to. I’ll be good.”

Aisa didn’t understand why her mother had so many rules. She wasn’t allowed to leave the house by herself, she couldn’t stand near the windows for too long, she couldn’t talk too loudly on the street… the list went on and on! It was like a prison! Sometimes she wondered if everyone’s parents were this strict. Perhaps her mother was being paranoid and overprotective of her because Big Sister ran away all those years ago. Being overly strict, however, wasn’t the way to keep them happy at home. At least that’s the way Aisa saw it. The stricter her mother became, the more she wanted to run away too.

Aisa often wondered what the rest of the world was like. When she was little, she and her brothers and sisters had a book about the legendary Airbenders and their flying bison. Sometimes she imagined she had one of those flying bison. She would soar above the neighborhood, above the rooftops of the Lower Ring, over the entire city of Ba Sing Se and then…. beyond. She didn’t know what lay beyond those walls, but she knew she wanted to find out someday.

But that was someday. Her immediate priority was figuring out how to sneak out to the market without her mother noticing.

___

Aisa felt quite proud of herself. She’d tried a new trick, and she hadn’t expected it to work. She’d intentionally sabotaged her brother Jae’s floor sweeping with some carefully placed broken glass, making it look like Minji had done it. While her two siblings were screaming at each other, and her mother desperately trying to intervene, she had grabbed some money and her beloved sketchbook and snuck out the back window. Her mother had never approved of her drawing habit. The supplies were too expensive, she always complained. _Why couldn’t you have been born an earthbender rather than an artist? Then you could work in the mine like your older brother and earn some money._ She never said it aloud, but the sentiment was always there.

It had been over an hour. She wondered if her mother had noticed she was gone, or if she was still busy trying to wrangle her many other children. Aisa had tried to find the neighbor girls at the market, but was unsuccessful in her search. Fair enough, the market was a huge place. There were stalls as far as the eye could see in every direction. Inside the stalls were goods from all over Ba Sing Se; and even the world! Some of the stalls contained exotic trinkets from as far away as the Si Wong Desert! There were fruit stands, vegetable stands, and even a stand that sold nothing but cabbages! Aisa wondered briefly how the hapless-looking cabbage merchant could stay in business without diversifying his selection, but she was quickly distracted by a stall across the market’s central hub.

The stall that caught her attention was glittering with hundreds of pieces of jewelry. They were all displayed on velvet pillows of various colors that complemented their luster. The jewelry merchant, a portly man with a long beard, seemed to be taking a nap, leaning back covering his eyes with his large conical hat. _How stupid of him_ , Aisa thought, _anyone could just walk away with one of these things and he wouldn’t even notice…_

Aisa stared transfixed at the beautiful necklaces and earrings on the display in front of her. Shimmering jade, emerald, turquoise, and gold. She’d never seen such a high level of craftsmanship in jewelry before. Certainly no one in her neighborhood could afford such pretty things. She wondered for a moment what the jewelry stand was doing here, in the market in the poorest section of town. Perhaps there was more of a demand than she thought…

“They’re all really nice, huh?” Aisa heard a voice behind her. She turned around quickly and saw a teenaged girl, not much older than herself, standing there grinning so wide that dimples formed in the hollows of her cheeks.

“Yeah,” Aisa nodded, returning the girl’s smile. “I wish I could afford something.”

The girl’s face turned quizzical. She looked down at the table and back up at Aisa. Aisa noticed a glint of deep green emerald twinkle on her neck. She was wearing a beautiful necklace of her own. It complimented her dark hair and eyes nicely.

“I know how hard it is to live out here,” the girl said, gesturing to the surrounding buildings. Aisa was suddenly keenly aware of the crumbling streets and filth-filled gutters that characterized her neighborhood. “I grew up here too. Right over there, actually. It was hard; I had a lot of siblings and we struggled a lot.” The girl pointed at a seven-story apartment block down the road from the market.

“Where do you live now?” Aisa asked, suddenly quite curious about this girl. For having grown up so close to her own apartment block, Aisa had never seen her before. Of course, considering how little she was allowed to leave the house, that wasn’t a surprise. There were millions of people in Ba Sing Se; thousands in just this one section of the Lower Ring.

“I have a house in the Upper Ring now,” the girl said with a twinge of pride in her voice. “But I’m here to pay a visit to my family. Ahh—my poor mother; she hasn’t been the same since my father’s been gone!”

Aisa’s eyes widened. It was strange, but there was something about this girl that she felt drawn to. Aisa felt that she could trust her. “My father’s gone too! He was an earthbender. He worked long shifts down at the mine, until one day he just… never came home. They said it was a terrible accident, but they never found his body. They never even let us in to see. My Mom still has hope that he’s alive, and he’ll come home someday, but I’m not so sure.”

“I’m very sorry to hear about your father,” the girl said gently. “I’m glad your mother still has hope. We all need to have hope when times are hard. Growing up, I kept hope during the hardest days, when we had to dig through the dumpsters to find food. When we got evicted from our first apartment because we couldn’t pay the rent. When my youngest brother died after falling out of a window…” She trailed off, the memories clearly becoming too painful to recall.

“Oh spirits,” Aisa murmured, “I know what it’s like to lose a sibling. My big sister ran away years ago. One moment she was there, and the next minute, she was gone. My mom’s never been the same. She’s gotten way too strict about everything!”

“I always dreamed of running away, too,” the girl said wistfully. “I always wanted to see the world beyond these walls. But I knew my family would be devastated, so I never did. Turns out, I didn’t have to.”

“How did you get a house in the Upper Ring, anyway?” Aisa asked.

“I was always pretty good at drawing.” The girl shrugged slightly. “One day, a very rich man saw me with my sketch pad in the park. He was really impressed with my work, and invited me to show my works at the palace. There, they liked me so much that I was invited to stay and paint for the nobles. They really appreciate the arts in the Upper Ring!”

“Hey… I like to draw, too!” Aisa proclaimed excitedly. “I love going up to the roof of my apartment building at night and sketching everything below me. I bring my drawing book everywhere I go. If I show it to you… do you think you can tell me if…. I—I could be good enough to paint for the royal court someday?”

“Hm… I don’t normally do this, but I suppose I can take a look,” the girl said, pursing her lips.

Aisa excitedly fumbled around in her bag, pulling out her book of drawings and handing it to the girl. The girl began to flip through it, nodding approvingly at each turn of the page. Once she reached the last page, she handed it back to Aisa.

“I think you absolutely have potential!”

Aisa beamed. Even though she’d just met this girl, Aisa was thrilled that she liked her drawings. _There was just something about her…_

“Thank you so much!”

“You know what? I’d like to make you an offer.” The girl looked pensive for a moment. “How would you like to come to the Upper Ring with me to study art with the best tutors in the kingdom? We can travel all over the world to get inspiration for our art.”

Aisa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Surely there must have been sky bison fluff in her ear! If what this girl was saying was true, this could be her ticket out of her rundown neighborhood, out of her mother’s suffocating grasp, out of the walls of the Lower Ring! She was so stunned at her sudden turn of luck that she became tongue-tied.

“Well… what do you say?” The girl grinned widely, extending her hand out to meet Aisa’s. “Do we have a deal?”

“Y-yes!” Aisa stammered, her heart skipping a beat. “A million times yes! I’d love to go to the Upper Ring with you and learn art! I should just go home and tell my mom and—”

“Why tell her?” The girl asked, narrowing her eyes. “Do you _really_ think she would let you leave?”

“Well… no. She wouldn’t even let me come to the market today.” Aisa laughed. “Imagine that! I sneak out to the market behind her back and now my life is about to change! Who’s wrong now, _Mom_?”

“Fate does have a way of intervening when you least expect it,” the girl chuckled along with her. “Now… speaking of pretty jewelry… which one of these necklaces would you like?”

Aisa’s heart skipped another beat. The offer of learning art in the Upper Ring was one thing; it was another thing altogether to be offered an expensive piece of jewelry in the same day!

“No… no… I can’t,” she protested. “I can’t let you do that.”

“I insist!” the girl proclaimed cheerfully. “Consider it a gift to celebrate your bright future!”

“I really can’t—” Aisa continued to protest. “I’ve never had anything nearly as nice as these…”

“How about… this one?” the girl reached down to the table and picked up a beautiful jade choker with a sparkling gold chain. She held it up to Aisa’s neck. “I think it suits you! Don’t worry at all about the price, my dear.”

Aisa looked at herself in the mirror nearby. The necklace was beautiful, and it made her look like so much more than a child from the slums of Ba Sing Se.

“Alright. I’ll take it!” Aisa smiled as she felt the weight of the gold chain around her neck. Instantly, she felt a calming sensation wash over her. _Everything is going to be alright. There is nothing wrong at all in the world._

“I didn’t quite catch your name,” the girl behind her said. “I’d love to get to know my future protégé a bit better.”

“I’m Aisa. It’s very nice to meet you… thank you so much!”

“It’s wonderful to meet you too, Aisa,” the girl said, her seemingly-perpetual grin widening even more. “ **I’m Joo Dee**.”

Aisa suddenly felt her eyes getting very heavy. Her temples started pounding, and her head flashed with heat and pain so intense it felt like it was exploding from the inside. She found that her legs were like jelly; and her arms felt as if they were no longer attached to her body. She fought to stay awake, but before long, the world faded away into darkness.


End file.
